Volkswagen Jetta’s social media campaign takes Twitter by storm

With the launch of the new Volkswagen Jetta, Grey Digital has designed a social media campaign, wherein popularising the ‘#anything4jetta’ hashtag on Twitter was one of the major parts of the campaign. The hashtag had been the top trending topic on Twitter in India over the past couple of days.

Talking about the conception behind the campaign, Sudhir Nair, Senior Vice President & Head, Grey Digital, said, “Volkswagen’s proposition for the all-new Jetta was simple: You’ll do anything to drive it. And given that the new breed of influencers and go-getters are now online, we decided to test their proposition with a simple question: Would you do #anything4jetta?”

“Twitter users around the country flocked to the hashtag, posting witty one-liners, embarrassing pictures and hilarious videos with. And with a unique call-to-tweet system, people began to serenade to the all-new Jetta (even if they weren’t on Twitter yet). Followers were also encouraged to upload their photos and videos showing what they can do to win the all-new Jetta,” he added.

Users need to post a wacky tweet on what they would do to win the all-new Jetta. There are multiple ways to participate, including mobile (texting or recording a message), and the more active the involvement, the better the chances of winning.

Nair added, “The target audience for the campaign fits snugly into the ‘dynamic performers’ category, people who desire a lot more and can push themselves to succeed. The average age of buying a car in this segment has decreased over the last few years and this set of people are heavy consumers of social media. What influences them is Internet memes and buzzing topics.”

The campaign has different layers of increasing brand follows and ‘shareability’ (an intricate algorithm based on tweets and re-tweets, popularity and creativity). Followers are also encouraged to upload their photos and videos showing what they can do to win the Jetta.
As a result of the campaign, #anything4jetta trended on Twitter for two days. Nair remarked, “(It is) a rare and remarkable feat for a brand competing with news like Beyonce’s pregnancy and the England-India T20 match. @volkswagenindia also became the most popular Twitter account in India during this time (besting names like Rahul Bose and Kiran Bedi).”

Over the first three days, the campaign recorded 54,000 Tweets. Peak activity was as high as 2,900 tweets an hour, and the website received 100,000+ views in three days. The @volkswagenindia account also netted an incremental 4,000 followers, fostering a community for future activities.

The website, www.anything4jetta.com, has been designed in html5 to ensure that the live aggregation of tweets do not come in the way of the site loading almost instantaneously
Commenting on the campaign, Bishwajeet Samal, Head of Marketing Communication at Volkswagen, said, “We wanted to communicate and engage with users on Twitter in a way which encourages them to be innovative; which is one of the core values for Brand Volkswagen. What better medium than Social Media? The first days of the campaign have been fabulous and we are hoping to the see the twitterverse buzzing with #anything4jetta during the entire contest period.”